


had a feeling that i belonged

by justdoityoufucker



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dogs, Idiots, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-02 11:38:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15795747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justdoityoufucker/pseuds/justdoityoufucker
Summary: Wolves had been chased out of the forests surrounding Konoha years before the city itself had actually been founded. The Inuzuka, the oldest clan to lay claim to the area before the Senju built it up, had killed and run off the packs of red wolves native to the region both to protect others living in the region and lessen the competition for their own ninken. In all, nearly a century since anyone within the walls of Konohagakure or the thick forests surrounding the city had heard the howl of a wolf.Until a clear, cold winter night, perhaps a dozen years after the death of the Yondaime Hokage, when the solitary howling of a wolf rang out over the city.





	had a feeling that i belonged

**Author's Note:**

> Uhh in this house we stan Iruka being the weird supernatural creatures, thank you. Title from Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.

Wolves had been chased out of the forests surrounding Konoha years before the city itself had actually been founded. The Inuzuka, the oldest clan to lay claim to the area before the Senju built it up, had killed and run off the packs of red wolves native to the region both to protect others living in the region and lessen the competition for their own ninken. In all, nearly a century since anyone within the walls of Konohagakure or the thick forests surrounding the city had heard the howl of a wolf.

Until a clear, cold winter night, perhaps a dozen years after the death of the Yondaime Hokage, when the solitary howling of a wolf rang out over the city.

-

Kakashi was wide awake. It was hard not to be, with eight ninken of varying sizes clustered atop his bed and, by extension, atop him. They were talking amongst themselves, quiet enough that Kakashi couldn’t make out more than every third or so word. Why in the hell they were even awake at--

he blearily glanced at the clock ticking on his dresser

\--two in the morning was a wonder to him. Probably a fat squirrel in the tree next to the window. He buried his face back in the pillow and tried his best to ignore the grumbling of the dogs atop him.

Then he heard it, as Shiba and Bisuke’s paws dug into the small of his back. A deep, mournful howling floating in through the cracked window, too deep, too wild to be the howling of a dog or ninken.  _ A wolf _ .

“Boss, boss, it’s a wolf, boss,” he didn’t know which of his ninken was speaking, because all of them were jabbering in excitement.

“Get off my back,” he said, rolling so half of them were dumped off the bed. Bull was pinning his feet down, so it didn’t work that well. “You know we’ll probably have a mission tomorrow, let me sleep.”

“But boss, they sound so sad,” that was Uuhei, nosing the exposed skin of his neck with her cold, wet nose. Goddamn it.

“Yeah, can’t we go help ‘em? They sound lost,” Akino chimed in, and Bull grunted his agreement from where he was still pinning Kakashi’s feet to the bed. The other dogs yipped their agreement, and Kakashi’s neighbor to the north started hitting the wall.

He cast a glare at all of his dogs, which was enough to gain silence. “I’ll think about it,” he said severely. The dogs meekly returned to sleeping, though as Kakashi fell back into sleep he could hear them muttering again, as the howling of the wolf continued.

-

Inuzuka Hana cornered him in front of the grocery store as soon as he stepped out with a bag of tea and noodles hanging off his arm, accompanied by one of her mangy mutts who promptly drooled all over Kakashi’s sandals.

“You hear our friend outside the city last night?” She walked with him step-for-step, a hand atop her ninken’s head.

“Hard not to,” Kakashi said, “and this morning is probably more accurate. Why?”

She looked at him as if he was particularly stupid. “Ma’s starting a hunt in a week for it. You do know the Inuzuka history, right, oh glorious Copy-nin?”

“Of course,” he rolled his eyes. God, the Inuzuka were gung-ho. “And?”

“And that gives you or someone else a week to chase it away from the village. I’m just sayin’,” she continued, “Ma is a little vicious and will hunt to kill. I can’t get away from the village and nobody else wants to chase it off.”

“I’ll do it,” he said in the same exasperated tone he’d taken with his ninken that morning. Perhaps it would serve to satisfy both Hana and his summons. “Why does she even want to hunt it?”

Hana shrugged, veering off. “Tradition,” she yelled, as they headed off in opposite directions. “Isn’t that one of your specialties, Hatake?”

-

And that was how Kakashi found himself outside the walls of Konoha the next night, having successfully trapped all of his ninken in his apartment to prevent them from whatever type of help they might try to give. It was chilly and he didn’t have high hopes of actually finding the wolf, but at least it was a cloudless night, which meant the full moon illuminated his way out of the village.

Within a half hour of casting around, trying to catch the animal’s scent, he heard the howling again; not so distant once he was outside of the city. But moving into the distance, at a fast enough rate that Kakashi couldn’t quite keep up.

He tracked for hours, an exhausting job. Of course, it would’ve been quicker with the ninken, and he half-wished he had brought them by the time midnight passed. The wolf ranged extremely far, deep in the woods, to the north and east of the village. Kakashi tried to find possible dens, but none of the locations heavy with the wolf’s scent were suitable.

In fact, the area most saturated with scent was an overgrown clearing. The grass was tamped down in some areas; given no other direction, Kakashi decided to sit and wait.

It was a long wait, however. He could smell the dewing of the morning before the wolf sped toward the clearing, but then--there was a man who dropped from a tree, and Kakashi lost track of the wolf because of the sudden appearance.

He was familiar, that much was obvious. Kakashi could recognize the long brown hair, the dark skin, the pale scar across the bridge of his nose. It was easy to remember from where, because he always seemed to be with the Hokage or around the Tower whenever Kakashi was receiving missions or dropping off scrolls. A name escaped him.

Kakashi carefully kept silent, slipped down the tree to get a better view. It almost looked as if he was on a mission and had taken a break from traveling to patch up wounds--a first aid scroll was sitting unsealed on the ground next to him. Likely the sound he had made while traveling had scared the wolf off, though the smell of the animal still permeated the clearing. While the man cleaned some gashes on his hands, bandaged them, Kakashi let his eyes slip shut and his hand tug his mask down.

Scenting for the wolf wasn’t hard; it seemed as if it spent a lot of time in that particular clearing, enough so that its scent masked that of the man currently inhabiting said clearing. Of course there were regular wolf smells, but he also caught the scent of tea, something somewhat sharp that made Kakashi think of ink and calligraphy. Strange; very human scents. He sifted through the smells again while the man below packed up his scroll. Sharp adrenaline, stress, and, inexplicably,  _ sadness _ .

In fact, the sadness was most prominent, and as Kakashi opened his eyes to watch the man leaving the clearing, he mused over why that might be. Both his own ninken and the Inuzuka’s had heard just one wolf; perhaps it had become separated from its kin, or the rest of its pack had been killed.

The man finally gone, Kakashi flickered to the forest floor to try and pick up the trail.

-

He spent most of the goddamn morning trying to track the wolf, with absolutely no success.

Well, if success was to be measured by keeping the scent, he was successful. But apparently he’d mixed up the wolf’s scent with that of the man, because the only trail he could pick up was one leading to Konoha.

Fine.  _ Fine _ . He’d go on a romp across the countryside later but he wanted to take a three hour long nap and sleep for at least an hour before the Hokage (inevitably) contacted him for a mission.

Kakashi might’ve seen Hana when walking back to his apartment.

And he might’ve flipped her off.

-

By the time he got back from the Land of Earth nearly a month later, it was plain to see that the Inuzuka had not had any luck. Mostly because he was traveling back at night, and the scent of the wolf was still thick in the forest. 

Well, why the hell not. Kakashi deviated from the direct route back and circled around to the northwest wall of the city, relying on his memory to find the clearing. Over the past weeks, he’d considered the options: the man he had seen might have wolf summons or the man had interrupted the wolf, scaring it away for a few weeks. What the hell, he didn’t know what was happening, trying to fathom a guess would be foolhardy.

How convenient, then, when the man in question appeared in the clearing, a small bag slung over one shoulder. He stopped at the base of a tree, did something in the dirt. The bag disappeared, and the man stood, rolled his shoulders and tugged the tie out of his hair.

And then--

He  _ changed _ .

-

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” Kakashi whispered to himself as the wolf-who-had-been-a-man laid on the ground, panting slightly.

As he watched with disbelieving eyes, the animal stood, lazily stretched before flopping back on the ground and, in an action that reminded Kakashi of his own ninken to a horrible degree, rolled in the dirt. The tawny color of his coat couldn’t be completely masked by the grey-brown of the dirt; his eyes were the same dark, intelligent brown, and the mark across his nose was still there. It was clear, whether he wanted to believe it or not, that the man he had found was also the wolf he was searching for.

Were Kakashi a lesser shinobi, he might have lost it completely, but as it was he just entered a stage of shock and didn’t shake himself out of it until the wolf yipped. He looked down to find the animal pushing the bag the man had been carrying under a knotted root of the tree he was standing in.

Then Kakashi made a mistake.

He moved his foot, and a flurry of twigs and leaves fell atop the wolf’s head.

-

The low growl, menacing and fearful, remained in Kakashi’s ears even when he was back in Konoha. It was still dark, still the middle of the night, but he moved with feverish haste.

First, Asuma, because he knew Asuma would be awake and he knew Asuma would know the man he was looking for. His mind was moving almost too quickly for his body to keep up.

Asuma gave him a name, and with that he broke into the chuunin dorms, short-circuited the (very ingenious) traps set up in the windowsills and the door, and snooped.

Umino Iruka, huh?

-

He was waiting at the tree, all weapons divested back in his own dorm, locked with the dogs and his uniform. Kakashi didn’t know much about wolves that were actually people, but he figured surrender was a good course of action. Hence, civvies, no weapons.

God he hoped Iruka wasn’t the shoot first, ask later type.

-

Right, so, having a growling wolf lunging for him and then abruptly stuttering and shrinking into the form of a disheveled man is both terrifying and a little sad, but Iruka still looks like he’s ready for murder and Kakashi has no doubt that if he wasn’t who he was he would already be dead.

They stand there, in the most awkward ceasefire Kakashi had ever been a part of.

Finally, Iruka sighed. “What do you want?”

As diplomatically as possible, Kakashi replied, “For you not to get hunted down and killed by Inuzuka Tsume and that hellhound of hers.”

Iruka pursed his lips. Distrust, obviously, but also fear. “Of course, I forget about Konoha’s...illustrious history. I suppose,” he paused, looked at Kakashi, his eyes asking one question.  _ Can I trust you _ ?

“Whatever needs to be done to convince you I won’t betray your trust about this, I will do,” Kakashi said, sitting a little straighter. He was mildly interested at first, but now he’s fully intrigued by this young man.

_ Not that much younger than you are, _ he scolded himself as Iruka considered him. Still suspicious, but also thoughtful.

He sat, sighed, and pushed Kakashi out of the way to release the seal at the base of the tree, pull the bag Kakashi had watched him stash out. The bag, it turned out, was mostly full of food.

Iruka spoke without bothering to wait to start eating jerky., “I’ve always been like this. My parents never had the chance to fully explain it, before they died. But my mother was the same; the first years of my life we always took the change together.”

“Full moon?” Kakashi hesitantly asked.

Iruka nodded, and he didn’t look so vicious when gnawing on a rations bar, “Like clockwork. Four or five days around the full moon, depending.”

Kakashi bit his lip, because since he was no longer terrified of Iruka ripping his throat out (and he  _ was _ ) he had become completely lost in fascination about this unique...condition. As if he could sense the questions bubbling in Kakashi’s mind, Iruka glanced at him.

“Considering all I’ve told you,” he said, thoughtful in a devilish sort of way, “I think you owe me, Hatake Kakashi.”

-

He cautiously followed Iruka for the next change; after he was finished, Kakashi approached. He didn’t really have a plan, other than two vouchers to the barbecue in his back pocket, but he figured it was worth the risk.

-

It turned out protein-loading left Iruka docile and floppy, and Kakashi spent the next two nights of the full moon getting drooled on. The experience was surreal, and when Kakashi finally woke up after sleeping four hours the second day he questioned if he hadn’t simply hallucinated the whole thing.

Somehow, though, it became a regular thing. At least, when Kakashi was in Konoha and when Iruka was in Konoha and when all those things aligned with the full moon.

But then it extended past that, and Kakashi had the pleasure of getting to know Umino Iruka during the day. A teacher and desk worker in the Tower, he was unerringly sharp and witty, and never afraid to call Kakashi out on his bullshit. It was easy to see why the Hokage liked him, especially when Kakashi was painfully aware that  _ he _ liked him.

Fucking hell. A teacher who could turn into a wolf.

-

Eight months after their first introduction, Kakashi was timing the length of his current mission by the phases of the moon. He’d left the second day of the new moon; returning, the moon was a nearly full gibbous.

Just in time; he dropped off his report, gave a verbal to the Hokage. He had just enough time to take a shower before intercepting Iruka as he left the Academy building, looking worn and fidgety.

“Dinner, sensei?” Kakashi slung an arm around his shoulders, was grateful that didn’t earn a punch in the ribs.

“Only if you’re buying,” Iruka replied, nuzzled in toward him despite the abrupt appearance.

-

They had barbecue, then went separate ways with a promise to meet before moonrise in the usual spot. Kakashi...fell asleep. He was late but--come on, when was he  _ not _ late? By the time he made it out of Konoha, Iruka was already changed, the russet of his fur in stark contrast to the green of the grass. A tackle caught him off-guard, and Iruka pinned him to the grassy ground, licked from his exposed chin to his forehead. His forehead protector was pushed completely off, and he couldn’t help a chuckle.

Well, Kakashi considered, wiping his face while Iruka rolled in the dirt, thoroughly coating himself, that’s one way of showing love.

-

Hana cornered him outside the grocer’s again, but whichever of her ninken was with her kept a respectful distance, and merely barked once.

“So,” she said.

Kakashi didn’t dignify that with a reply.

He could hear the eyeroll as she called out, “Thanks for dealing with it, Hatake! You should probably take a bath!”

He didn’t bother telling her that a bath was the first thing he done upon waking up. Instead, as was becoming habit, he flipped her off, and kept walking.

**Author's Note:**

> Currently in my last semester of my undergrad so I likely won't be posting a whole lot on here (unless I do fanfic for NaNoWriMo, but that's November). I do talk about fic that I'm working on on Twitter (@itscooljim) if you want to stay up to date.


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